Scottish ministers accused of ‘failure of leadership’ on North Sea oil and gas

The Scottish Government has been accused of a “failure of leadership” on the future of the North Sea – with one expert warning this approach risks “letting down workers and communities”.

Environmental Standards Scotland chair Dr Richard Dixon said the current government had “gone a little backwards from the rather strong position” adopted by previous first minister Nicola Sturgeon on oil and gas.

He said that it had been “an important moment when Nicola Sturgeon said there should be no more oil and gas licences”, but added that the current government “uses the shield” of saying any new developments in the North Sea should meet climate compatibility tests.

Speaking as MSPs on Holyrood’s Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee scrutinised the government’s draft climate change plan, Dr Dixon accused ministers of a “failure of leadership on oil and gas”.

The draft climate plan, unveiled earlier this month, sets out how the “geological maturity of the North Sea as an oil and gas basin means production will gradually decline over the coming years and decades”, saying that this “will inevitably mean a decline of jobs in the sector”.

Dr Dixon said: “Implicitly the Scottish Government is not taking a strategic approach to phasing out oil and gas, one of our major contributions to climate change. It is letting the market decide.

“And that is the worst of all worlds.

“Because if we let the market decide, it means we don’t prepare as a government and as a nation, we don’t do enough on just transition, on building up the other jobs that people can do and that communities can be supported by, because we’re just letting the market decide.”

He said that risked a similar situation to the “abruptness” of closure plans at both the Grangemouth oil refinery and the Mossmorran ethylene plant in Fife, where he said ministers had gone into “rescue mode, rather than delivering a solid plan we already had”.

Dr Dixon added: “So I would much rather see that the Scottish Government has a plan for how rapidly or slowly North Sea oil production will decline.”

He went on to tell MSPs that a “clear statement” from Holyrood ministers about future employment prospects in the North Sea and the “downward trajectory” of the sector could be “very helpful in stimulating more action and more seriousness from all stakeholders around the just transition debate”.

SNP MSP Kevin Stewart, who represents the Aberdeen Central area, argued that with Scotland still having a “continued need” for oil and gas, it would be better for the country to produce these in the North Sea rather than rely on imports of fossil fuels from countries such as Qatar at a “much greater carbon cost”.

But Dr Dixon said: “Should we need to have oil and gas after we don’t produce it any more there are much closer, much lower carbon European sources, particularly Norwegians, should we actually need to import any.”

With efforts under way to encourage people to switch from oil and gas heating to greener alternatives, and to change petrol and diesel cars for electric vehicles, he added that demand for oil and gas would be “disappearing”.

“So we shouldn’t let oil companies decide how long North Sea oil gets produced,” Dr Dixon said.

He said that Scotland’s oil and gas sector was “one of our biggest contributions, perhaps our biggest single contribution to damaging the global climate”.

And while much of the oil and gas produced in the North Sea is sold to other countries, Dr Dixon argued it would be “morally incorrect” for ministers not to consider the carbon emissions from this.

He told MSPs: “If we sit here and think climate change is really important, there is an emergency, we’re going to do lots about it but we don’t do anything about the many millions of tonnes that are produced by the oil and gas we sell somewhere else, we just think: ‘That’s someone else’s problem, that country needs to think about its own emissions and do something about its use of oil and gas.’

“That seems to be a morally incorrect position. We should be thinking we produce this, even if someone else burns it, we produce it. We should be thinking what to do about that.”